[Cos]

hiya spooge, Nice pose and feeling of the pic. The first thing
that struck me tho, was the guys bicep and forearm look really
distorted.. not sure if you see it. Also the perspective on the
sword looks kinda dodgy and the guys skin looks a little wooden
in areas. To be honest I don't like this one much compared to
your usual standard. sorry *runs away*

p.s that pic above is a blatent swipe man!
dezztroy heeem! :P

[aNoah]

That is a little much...
Geez, how are people supposed to learn without references?!

The swipe sites goes a little too far, I think. I mean, if you like a pose of a charecter that someone else did, and you incorporate it into your painting is that really swiping?
The case becomes even more interesting with student artists. We get assignments such as: "Take a classical artwork and combine with a cartoon charecter" Are we allowed to sign it?!

[This message has been edited by aNoah (edited October 24, 2000).]

[Flexible Elf]

Man I never realized how much 'homage' goes on in comics. To do one or two panels once or twice or a cover is fine (*with a footnote - "after joe schmoe").. but to do a whole book or several books swiping poses and such is ridiculous IMO.

-Flexible Elf

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http://www.geocities.com/flexible_elf/Main.html

[garuda_x]

i have considered rob leifield an overated HACK for pretty much the lifetime of his career.....when he said "yeahi created x-force" on the spike lee levi's commercial, i knew he had to be done with....and that fabio guy...its pretty sick. golly, i copied my share of artowrk from comics in my youth, but never passed it off as my own....style is derived from the artists perception of thioer surrounding, so it is difficult not to incorporate other styles you see into your own work, even picaso said "godd artists borrow, great artist STEAL" but i think he meant taking sometihing and making it your own, and not just copping somebodys work. oh well. i am tired of typing, so i will just copy and paste somebody elses words to finish this post.........heheh

[nori]

hmm that's interesting. I don't know much at all about comics except there are some tough deadlines. Perhaps some of the artists had to meet a deadline right away and so they swiped a page or whatever.

[opticillusion]

ah wow!

Just an overall excellent work! I like the color choice, and especially the lighting of the face and scene. The mood is great seeming like there's a good story beneath the pic.

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Metavisuals.com

[AliasMoze]

I smell paint looking at this one, it looks so traditional. I like the colors here. Nice one.

My comment on the "homage" page: Has Liefield ever drawn anything original? Geez. Having said that, I don't have a problem with homages, even if they are close. It happens in all forms of art more frequently than people think IMO. "The Iron Giant" is E.T. in Act One. Who cares. To me, it matters how much of the work is original. A single panel from a comic is not theft. A full painting ripped from someone else is a rip. Using Spooge's work and calling your own is DEFINITELY theft. And cheesy.

Oh well.

[spooge demon]

The name next I thought was this guy is next to fight...

Glad to be of service Micke. I meant to say I REALLY dug that head you did with the bright shadows. Super.

Yes, these are just for fun. Bizarde, no I do these really to explore and develop new ways of doing things. You learn by going through the whole process from conceptualizing, drawing, painting a great number of times. If I were to spend time �finishing� this one, that time would be lost for going through the process all over again. I think it would be a lot more time invested for very little return (meaning I would not learn much)

The other side of it is many people like the rougher finish. It has some life and spontaneity that may depart if I start noodling.

I could see re-planning the image from the ground up, that might have some value, but I would probably stop in the same place.

Frost, I would not worry about running tests with different light bulbs. But do ALWAYS be looking wherever you go at what things look like. Maybe before you did not think to look at cast shadow edges but now you do.

In general, yes the width of the source and the amount of diffusion due to particulates in the air are the main factors. Bounce lighting from other objects (which are just really big particles) will throw light into the shadow decreasing the relative contrast between light and shadow thereby softening a shadow edge.

But in general, keep your cast shadows sharper to contrast with the softer form shadows. Look at Fred�s quick figure sketches- they operate on this idea.

Thanks for the spot everyone on the arm. I see it now. I might even fix it. Nah, off to the closet.

Nori, Learn all you can about the figure and anatomy. Life Dra... You know. Keep drawing, there are no shortcuts. It was a little ambitious to concoct a figure like this out of my head in the time I had, I am happy there are as few mistakes as there are.

But ya know, a lot of people say they like it regardless of the technical faults. This is interesting to me. If the faults interfere with the enjoyment of the pic, then it�s a problem. My main focus is on the pic as a whole, no the smaller bits. I am pushing this idea a little too far sometimes.

God does not live in the details, he lives in the Gesture.

Optic illusion-Yes! I am getting more interested in the narrative. I have never been before, but I think this is a whole new universe and way to think for me.

Your words are very kind Pierre. I did this in PS 6 (still hating it and it is dragging my work down I feel) and the colors are really messed up. I opened the jpeg here on my PC and I could not believe how screwed the colors were. Not just gamma, but everything. I went back and tried to compensate, but it got all crushed in the process. This has got to stop.

Hey Cos, thanks for telling me. It is good to hear when something does not please. I appreciate it, you did not have to say anything.

[Fruitbat]

Not to get too philosophical, but swiping is a very tough area to police. Obviously ALL art is derivative in some way, (that is to say, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and no cavemen painted the mona lisa) so the question becomes how close can you get to one particular influence, and still be original. Is it swiping to copy someone's STYLE? POSE? EXPRESSION? There is legal precedence to sue someone for copyright infringement for making a sculpture from a photo, though obviously the sculptor had to add a lot. I saw a swipe once that was simply two artists using the same reference material too. You can start to see the problem. Some of my fellow artist take a purely legal stand and ask: When does the copyright expire? By their logic though you could ethically re-print a photo from 1900 and call it your own...and that doesn't seem right either. Rob and Fabio make me cringe, and I have personally had my art samples that were being handed around at a comic con, swiped from by a big league creator. That made me pretty mad because that was before I was getting work. I guess my final verdict is that as long as there is no harm done, I really don't care because the effect you will have on other artists (and the world) is proportional to the distance you are able to create between yourself and the rest of the artists around you. You sabatoge your own artistic vision by swiping too directly.

[n8]

geeze....i have been gone a while...when the hell did u get back mr mullins??...goddamn exams...oh well...ill have around 3 months off after theyre finished so ill prob be around more...yay...o yeah...nice pic =)